Retail Tech 2.0 for a Post-COVID-19 World（アフターコロナ時代のリテールテック2.0）

The retail industry is one of the most heavily impacted industries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the sector is under massive pressure to reinvent itself as the world considers a “new normal.” The brick-and-mortar retail industry has been struggling for years largely due to the rise of e-commerce, a phenomenon the United States calls the “retail apocalypse,” and now COVID-19 has dealt a death blow to several once prominent retailers, such as J. Crew and Neiman Marcus, which have filed for bankruptcy protection. Japan’s retail sector has not been as severely affected compared to the US and some European countries due to a milder business lockdown, but some retailers, such as Renown, have filed for bankruptcy domestically. As such, many retailers are now being forced to re-evaluate their entire operations both in terms of financial viability and public safety.

A New Normal in Retail 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a massive boom in the e-commerce market and has also popularized several new service models. In the United States, for example, in May 2020 e-commerce sales increased 77% year-on-year to US$82.5bn according to Adobe, which is an acceleration of 4-6 years in terms of growth rate. “Buy-Online-Pick-Up-In-Store” sales also increased by 195% in May according to the same report, and food delivery companies, such as DoorDash and Grubhub, have seen massive growth due to the pandemic and are starting to deliver non-food items. These shifts in consumer behavior are likely here to stay even after the pandemic subsides, and therefore, retailers will need to prepare for an accelerated if not permanent decline in retail footfall, new service delivery methods, and tighter online-to-offline integration.